Crespi d'Adda, the Ideal Workers' Village

The village of Crespi d'Adda is a veritable small town built at the end of the 19th century, along the Bergamasque bank of the Adda river, by a family of Lombard cotton industrialists (Crespi) for their employees and their families. The workers were provided with a house with a vegetable garden and garden and all the general services. In this 'ideal workers' village' the owner took care of all the employees' needs: inside and outside the factory and 'from the cradle to the grave'. Only those who worked in the textile mill could live in the village, and the life of each individual and of the whole community revolved around the factory itself, its rhythms and its needs. The village was added to the UNESCO list in 1995 under criteria IV and V as an exceptional example of a workers' village, the most complete and best preserved in Southern Europe.